Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the study’s findings regarding how U.S.-born Mexican American respondents negotiate the ethnic and American aspects of their identities, as well as the Spanish language, and their attitudes on immigration. Almost without exception, the American identity of the respondents remained constant, whereas the strength and meaningfulness of their ethnic background varied by individual and context. The chapter then expounds on the concept of the ethnic core as necessary for understanding the experiences of Mexican Americans, as well as other groups, and why it fills explanatory gaps left by theories of assimilation and race. Finally, it assesses the likelihood that ethnicity will remain durable for Mexican Americans in the future based on a variety of factors.

Attitudes About Immigration

This chapter addresses Mexican Americans’ attitudes about Mexican immigrants in the context of mass immigration. In addition to the boundary that exists between persons of Mexican heritage and non-Latinos, there is another important social boundary operating that highlights Mexican Americans’ understandings of their own ethnicity and American identity—the boundary between Mexican immigrants and themselves. Study respondents displayed a broad range of attitudes toward immigrants, illustrating the internal diversity of the Mexican American population, which runs contrary to their treatment in the media as a homogeneous ethnic group in terms of attitudes, politics, and voting. This chapter also demonstrates the underlying ideologies, philosophies, and rationales that respondents used to justify their immigration positions: whereas many framed their views based on American ideals, only a small minority framed them in terms of their ethnicity, basing their perceptions in an understanding of Mexican immigrants as co-ethnics.

Spanish Language

This chapter explores Mexican American identity and ethnicity through the prism of the Spanish language, which is perhaps the central characteristic in ethnic culture and identity among Mexican Americans. However, whereas virtually all U.S.-born Mexican Americans speak English, not all speak Spanish. More precisely, Mexican Americans are distributed along a continuum of language competence that ranges from English only to complete fluency in both English and Spanish, with the majority of individuals falling somewhere in-between. For the respondents, English is their primary language, whereas the use of Spanish varies greatly, depending on the situation and each individual’s linguistic abilities. Thus, regardless of actual linguistic ability, language as a concept raises a number of issues regarding Mexican Americans’ own ethnic identities and their relationship to members of the ethnic community.

Mexican American

This chapter assesses whether U.S.-born Mexican Americans feel American or a part of American society, even though they have been portrayed as threats to Americanism and have had their allegiance questioned. It also considers how their ethnic identity affects their sense of Americanness. For the respondents, they in no way perceive their ethnic and national identities as being mutually exclusive; to the contrary, they find these identities to be highly compatible and complementary. They define Americanness in terms of birthplace, political loyalty, and economic opportunities; they define Mexicanness in terms of culture, family, and ancestral background. Moreover, the vast majority of the respondents view national identity as their primary identity, something that is constant, natural, and unquestioned, whereas their ethnic identities vary in intensity, depending on the individual and the situation.

Mexican American

This chapter examines Mexican Americans’ understandings of their ethnic identities, including the meaning and importance they attribute to them and the relevance of ethnicity to their lives. It reveals how their ethnic expressions generally involve a mix of symbolic and consequential ethnicity but how ethnicity often manifests differently than the symbolic or optional expressions of ethnicity experienced by many later-generation European Americans. Many of the respondents, to varying degrees, had experiences of lacking choice regarding their ethnicity, having to negotiate both Mexican and American communities, having a sense of linked fate to co-ethnics, and being stereotyped or discriminated against—all of which signal a consequential aspect to their ethnicities. The chapter also illustrates how the full Mexican American Study Project sample is distributed along a symbolic–consequential ethnicity continuum and how these distributions vary by factors such as urban area, gender, skin color, and generation.

Introduction

Mexican Americans are unique in the panoply of American ethnoracial groups in that they are the descendants of the largest and longest lasting immigration stream in U.S. history. Today, there are approximately 24 million U.S.-born Mexican Americans, many of whom are multiple generations removed from their immigrant ancestors. Contrary to traditional assimilation theories, which predict that ethnicity and ethnic distinctions will disappear by the third generation, Mexican Americans exhibit a persistent and durable ethnicity with regard to their ethnic identity, culture, and networks. However, there is much heterogeneity within the population which ranges on a continuum from symbolic ethnicity to consequential ethnicity. We argue that one of the reasons for the group-level durability and the within-group variation is due to the existence of a strong ethnic core, the importance of which has been overlooked in previous assimilation theories.